• Baby sleeping thru the night...although this is a
good thing for us tired mothers, it can be painful for our breasts in
the beginning.

If your body is used to your baby nursing during the
night, it will continue to produce that amount of milk, even once your
baby starts sleeping thru the night, at least until it realizes you
don't need to produce that much milk anymore.

But until then......expect
to wake up with your breasts swollen and lumpy.....and sometimes
lop-sided(one breast bigger than the other)!

• You are away from your baby too long....like 5
hours or more. Such as being at work or school or out on the town.

If
your baby is little and still nurses a lot, your breasts will become
swollen with milk.

If your baby is older and has started eating solid
food, you can stay out longer without becoming extremely swollen.

I have experienced engorgement in all four of these situations....so what did I do?

SOLUTION: Immediate engorgement relief!

Go get a hot wet wash cloth, as hot as you can stand it, and grab your baby while you're at it!

Find a comfortable place to sit and place the wash cloth on top of
your breast.

Let your baby nurse on that same breast. The warmth of the
towel will make your milk come out quicker, relieving your pain fast!

If your baby doesn't want to nurse or you're not around your baby, still do the exact same thing with the wash cloth and just pump your breasts with your hand or a breastpump.

SOLUTION: What you're doing to become engorged and how to prevent future swelling

In the beginning, for a day or two, my baby was latching on pretty good......

Then we just couldn't get it anymore.

My breast started filling up with milk fast because he wasn't
latching on like he was supposed to. He wasn't opening his mouth wide
enough for me to put enough of my breast in, in order for him to eat and
empty them.

And because my breast were filling up fast, it became even more difficult to get the nipple into his little mouth.

I then used my cheap pump from Walmart to try and empty my breasts in
order to feed him a little milk and try again to get him latched on.
This would make it a little easier since my breasts wouldn't be so
swollen.

But the pump didn't pump good enough. It didn't extract enough milk from my breasts to make them go down.

So there I was......

Engorged, heading towards mastitis, with a crying, hungry baby in my lap and a cheap breastpump!

Make sure you get a good breastpump from the beginning.That way, you can pump just enough to relieve the swelling.

Whether you are away from your baby for long periods of time, your
baby is sleeping thru the night, not latching on properly or your milk
is coming in for the first time, having a good breast pump will help
tremendously.

Also, when your baby starts sleeping thru the night, you can always
wake him up to nurse in order to relieve the pain. I'm sure your little
precious won't mind snuggling under mommy!

Now that your breasts are de-gorged (made-up word), I recommend getting some
booby tubes (not made-up word). My second mistake was not having these in the beginning!

Warm them up and put them on your breasts while you are nursing to help get your milk flowing, and to prevent engorgement by keeping your milk ducts unclogged.

Freeze them and wear them between feeding to help reduce the swelling of your breasts.